CLEPA organised the first Counterfeit day

Date

Links

Sections

On 22nd November, CLEPA has held a special event called “Counterfeit Day”, providing high-level expertise on the enforcement of intellectual property infringement in the EU and beyond.

Counterfeiting is a global topic and it has a detrimental impact across industries. The brands of the Automotive suppliers are an important pillar of the independent repair market. The use of genuine spare parts is crucial for the confidence and trust of consumers in quality and safety of repair and maintenance work in franchised and independent repair shops. Automotive suppliers make strong efforts to provide a full product line in OE-specification in order to ensure proper repairs of even the latest vehicle models with an increasing technical complexity. The use of genuine parts is a prerequisite for a proper operation of vehicles over their lifetime. Product and brand protection in the form of law enforcement is steadily improving the intellectual property of our industry.

During the event, representatives from the European Commission and EUROPOL have reported about the increasing volumes of counterfeit parts also in the automotive sector and their measures and actions against this trend. The conference has also given room to service providers to make fake parts detectable via different track and trace approaches using the latest technologies. Workshops play a significant role in the selection and installation of genuine parts, therefore CLEPA appreciated the innovative idea of a reward system to make it attractive for workshops and end consumers to identify the installed parts as genuine. This strengthens brand awareness at the consumer level. Finally, service providers presented their local support in countries known as main sources for counterfeits to help genuine parts suppliers to protect and defend their brands.

More than 50 specialists participated, exchanging best practice, years of experience and innovative ideas to protect the rights of CLEPA members in the interest of consumers.